Because irrational people seem to outnumber rational people on this planet by a fair margin

Fortunately this isn't true. It's just that the irrational people are more vocal than the moderate people. It's the nature of the strongly opinionated to make their opinion known loudly...

Depends on what you are using as a benchmark for 'rational' - I would say that the vast majority of people are irrational, fortunately they tend to be harmless for the most part ("I believe in luck") although you do of course get people who have gone A1 Bat Shit Crazy (see ISIS and related subject matters).

Depends on what you are using as a benchmark for 'rational' - I would say that the vast majority of people are irrational, fortunately they tend to be harmless for the most part ("I believe in luck") although you do of course get people who have gone A1 Bat Shit Crazy (see ISIS and related subject matters).

It also depends on what subject is being discussed. Xtian fundamentalists (and there are seriously plenty of them) would say to diverse people "you choose to be the way you are, you were not born like that"

How illogical and irrational is that? Very... These same people would talk quite rationally on other subjects of discussions

Just to be clear, when I was talking about atheists that bring up the "choice" argument, I was talking more about several "prominent" youtubers that I'm aware of, not people on this thread :)

Why don't we leave out the religious flaming just once? I mean, for once, just for once, this was more about gender inequality than religion.

But yeah, of course it matters more that the guys saying something you don't agree with are atheists than what they are saying. Because them not believing in the same religion than you automatically invalidates everything they are saying.

... okay, rant over, I'll calm down now...

Just to be clear, when I was talking about atheists that bring up the "choice" argument, I was talking more about several "prominent" youtubers that I'm aware of, not people on this thread :)

Why don't we leave out the religious flaming just once? I mean, for once, just for once, this was more about gender inequality than religion.

But yeah, of course it matters more that the guys saying something you don't agree with are atheists than what they are saying. Because them not believing in the same religion than you automatically invalidates everything they are saying.

... okay, rant over, I'll calm down now...

Okay, do calm down, cause I'm an atheist too, and had no intention of starting a "flamewar" about religion :) I was merely remarking how it's kind of contradictory that atheists which on one hand will probably say "free will" is an illusion anyway and all it exists is our physical brains(something I agree with), will OTOH just resort to some nebulous "choice" concept when discussing the careers people enter into, and the focus they put into them, disregarding the possibility that our way of thinking, and thus our choices *are* formed by our interactions with our environment, at least in some capacity, and the ideas/stereotypes that are presented to us.

atheists which on one hand will probably say "free will" is an illusion anyway and all it exists is our physical brains(something I agree with)

Wait, what? Which atheists say that?

This line of argument is a strawman usually presented by religious folks looking to bash atheism. It's so prevalent in such uses that articles like this have to be written.

atheists which on one hand will probably say "free will" is an illusion anyway and all it exists is our physical brains(something I agree with)

Wait, what? Which atheists say that?

A...lot of them?

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4888/do-we-have-free-will-the-atheist-case-for-determinism

https://danielmiessler.com/blog/dennett-wrong-freewill/

Just some examples, but let's not derail the thread again because of a tangential observation I made. Even the article you linked supports determinism, it just says that the concept of "free will" and responsibility for our choices can exist even inside that framework. It doesn't say there is something beyond our physical brains and everything physical they interact with.

It doesn't say there is something beyond our physical brains and everything physical they interact with.

Nothing about free will suggests that it requires something outside of our brains.

Even physical processes are only superficially deterministic - quantum particles don't all line up neatly by themselves, you know.

It doesn't say there is something beyond our physical brains and everything physical they interact with.

Nothing about free will suggests that it requires something outside of our brains.

Even physical processes are only superficially deterministic - quantum particles don't all line up neatly by themselves, you know.

If the brain is "nothing more" than particles going in trajectories obeying the laws of physics, I don't see where this "free will" thing fits in.

As for the "uncertainty" of quantum processes, first, from what I've read at least, most scientists posit that they don't really affect our brain processes, happening in sub-atomic scales and all, and second, even if some "randomness" exists, again I don't see how that makes it "free will". Quoting Harris here:

And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism—quantum or otherwise—we can take no credit for what happens.

If the brain is "nothing more" than particles going in trajectories obeying the laws of physics, I don't see where this "free will" thing fits in.

Deterministic systems in the mechanical sense have very little to do with philosophical determinism. It's a source of unfortunate confusion that the same word was used in both cases.

As long as humans can't reliably predict the outcomes of every interaction with their environment, determinism is entirely indistinguishable from free will. The issue only really becomes concrete when we discuss higher beings. Could an alien race have achieved a level of cognition sufficiently advanced that they can comprehend the determinism in processes that to us appear random? And at that point, could we distinguish them from gods?